5. The Democracy Myth
Democracy is held up as the beacon of the free world - its badge of honour. Our politicians are more inclined to talk about the virtues of a democratic society, rather than a free one. It’s the new religion of the secular state. Democracy is not a means to any particular end, but an end in itself.
But just what is democracy?
It’s the idea that the majority is right. It’s the idea that morality can be decided by the counting of heads. It’s the idea that one man’s vote is as good as another’s.
Historically, democracy is seen as a natural progression from Theocracy or Monarchy. Apart from the early democracy of Greece, human experience has largely be shaped by the rule of Church or King. So, shifting the balance of power to the ordinary person in the street was seen as a move in the right direction.

Published by SovereignLife.com
Disclosure: Unlike a typical "Manifesto", which is a statement of things to be"done", The Sovereign Manifesto is a statement of things to be "undone" - in particular, certain cultural myths that can lock individuals into a particular "slave mindset". Theideas contained in this report may be considered by many to be heretical, revolutionary,radical, or even dangerous - and certainly capable of changing the existing social orderas we know it. But like all ideas, their power is only realised when they are put intoaction - by individual people.
The 8 Deadly Myths That Conspire to Enslave You
Have you ever asked yourself the question: "Why are things the way they are?"Have you ever got angry at the status quo - the stupidity, the injustice and the inertia?More importantly, have you ever tried to take off your cultural spectacles and view theworld anew? It’s certainly hard to do, if not near impossible for most people. And there’s a goodreason why.
Our view of the world, and our relationship to it, is shaped by the world as it is - not how it could be. It is shaped by our genes, our family environment, our education,and the culture we grow up within - whatever nation or ethnicity. We are the product ofthe given, the existent - the accepted norm. Our traditional thinking is therefore a product of our past.

Sorry, but you are mistaken. If you want to make a point, please do so explicitly so a meager intellect such as mine will comprehend.
Or not. Your choice, of course.
PS: I said no such thing. I wrote that your specific response was innuendo and that is was not explicit. It may be interpreted in several ways, meaning your response was, to use computer science parlance, "non-deterministic".

Trump has done some good things - or at least better than might otherwise have been done.
If I dare assume he is not a knowing and willing part of a grand smoke and mirrors campaign, then I will equally dare assume he genuinely cares about this nation and its people. He is a pretty savvy negotiator, in spite of and perhaps because of the failures he has endured to which his detractors so piously devote their wild and ranting tirades. In spite of an endlessly hostile Congress, he has managed to nudge this monster called the "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in a direction that at least appears to improve upon that on which it had been previously charted.
That said, in some of the most important ways he appears to be a conventional thinker. This should come as no surprise to anyone with a brain worth mentioning and whose switch is not in the "off" position. He espouses not only military might, but its positive and proactive use as an instrument of foreign policy. He has yet to publicly question some of the most fundamental and deeply tacit assumptions upon which the administration of American governance is based - taxation, prohibition, and so forth. Perhaps he cannot see beyond those assumptions - after all, have they not served him well in at least some cases? Perhaps he will not. I cannot know with perfection what goes on in the head of another man.
We still have much of which to remain skeptical where Trump is concerned, but let us keep a tally of the better (v. "good") and the bad, remembering to temper our expectations based on these known and likely limitations. He may not be a boogie man, but we pretty well know he is not the one to deliver us from the evil of tyranny. But we can be thankful for any small blessings that come our way via the good intentions of a man whose apparent world view is not based on a set of assumptions so completely failed as those of the progressives.
He's not perfect; far from it, in fact - but for pity's sake take the small and incremental improvements for what they are: good to have, if insufficient in the broader view. Nonetheless, it is better to improve in fits and starts, than decay further. It's only been a year. Lets see where the coming twelve months leads. Rinse and repeat in piecemeal fashion. That is how the "left" has done it and thus far it has proven a valid strategy. It is the strategy taught by the Gracies in their so-called "jujutsu": never relinquish an advantage, save that it be exchanged for one of greater value; take your gains as they come, and be patient to hold a given position all day long, if that is what is needed.

A little Snowden tribute from Jeffrey Tucker:
worked in a massive professional machinery of enormous power, prestige, and money. His world was the pinnacle of achievement for his skill set. Everything about the massive surveillance state broadcast that there was no escape. Everything about his environment demanded compliance, service, and submission. His job was to check at the door his individualism, integrity, and character and become a faithful cog in a machinery of superiors.
Everyone else went along. They didn’t question it. If they did question the goings on, it was purely abstract. Surely there was no real escape. You could only adapt, enjoy the power, take the money, and die someday.
Snowden, for whatever reason, decided to take a different direction. Alone, and without consulting even those closest to him, he struck out on his own. He took the unfathomable risk of copying all the most pertinent files. … What he revealed rocked the world.
Throughout it all, he was scared but never indecisive. Unimpressed by the machinery all around him, he saw it not as his master and not even his equal. He saw it all as beatable. He knew that what he was doing was right, and he did it all because – against all odds – he thought he could make a difference. He literally risked his life in the service of human freedom. …

From Jeffrey Tucker:
She was born in Russia and fated to live under communist despotism. Had she acquiesced to the systems around her, she might have lived and died in poverty and obscurity. … She wanted her life to matter. So she plotted her own escape from Russia. … Alone … built a career as scriptwriter, before writing her own plays and becoming a novelist. This peasant born in Russia made a brilliant career for herself, becoming one of the 20th century’s most influential minds – all without an academic career or any champions in the centers of power. …
Rand’s greatest characters follow a similar path of refusing to go along … Her message is that one person with a mind and moral stamina can stand up to even the most powerful machinery of oppression. … Rand’s influence is still making the world a freer place. ...

It is a distraction only to the short sighted. It is not a single act in isolation. Its not simply little Pence's pouting and sitting for the historic, peace promoting, groundbreaking march of the unification team. Each of the stupid Pence antics and Trump administration's antics is not in isolation, but a concerted pattern of arrogant foreign policy.
The entire purpose of Nitwit Neocon Pence's Korea tour was to prevent any peace and diplomacy, extinguish any sparks of peace, drive a wedge between the Korea's, silence any dialogue, thwart any reconciliation. As Dr. Ron Paul succinctly put it, Pence's role at the Olympics was to prevent any peace overtures.
From sabotaging Moon's pre-scheduled diplomatic VIP dignitary reception dinner, to shaking every single diplomats hand at the VIP dignitary table except the NK diplomat, to avoiding any dialogue, to being the only two people in the entire Olympic stadium that did not stand for the march of the Korean unification team, to proclaiming "there is no daylight and there will be no daylight” between the Koreas; to promising during his tour a new level of the most extreme sanctions on top of the already most extreme sanctions ( don't ask me what that could be- maybe fining people for even looking at NK on the map or talking about it).
Yes, Pence played he complete evil fool.
Add to this the both evil and stupid policies of :

Dr. AWR Hawkins–Florida School Shooting: Time to Arm Teachers for Self-Defense
Are teachers to join their students and shelter in place while dialing 911? ... arm themselves with chalkboard erasers, books, or rulers?
All of these are terrifying options because they ultimately mask defenseless – the very defenselessness that results from being disarmed ...
Consider ... Sandy Hook ... The attacker ... had over nine minutes without armed resistance. ... over nine minutes with no means of defense ...
What if just two teachers had been armed? How many lives might they have saved, even if it took till the four minute mark to stop the attacker? ...
The lessons from Sandy Hook cross over to Marjory Stoneman Douglas ... How many lives could two (or three) armed teachers have saved by greeting the attacker with armed resistance? ...

Oh no... the Eville Debt(tm)...
I say crank that bitch WAY up. Lets see the debt rocket into the quadrillions and quintillions.
If you're going to go down that road, I say go all the way to the end and dispense with this candy-assed half-measures nonsense and the gratuitous hand-wringing.
There is no real debt because a dollar is not money. People are falling for one of the oldest tricks in the book: buying into a lie and then fretting about the manipulations based on it. Come on. The "money" is a lie. The debt based on that money is a lie. Therefore, I say put the pedal to the metal and let 'er rip for all it's worth.
The "debt" doesn't worry me in the least. What does worry me are all the nitwits who buy into this and who will doubtlessly buy into the lies attached to the deeper lie.

we are spending far too much money on schooling, not too little. … we have too many people employed in interfering with the way children grow up – and that all this money and all these people, all the time we take out of children’s lives and away from their homes and families and neighborhoods and private explorations – gets in the way of education. …
One of the principal reasons we got into the mess we’re in is that we allowed schooling to become a very profitable monopoly, guaranteed its customers by the police power of the state. Systematic schooling attracts increased investment only when it does poorly, and since there are no penalties at all for such performance, the temptation not to do well is overwhelming. That’s because school staffs, both line and management, are involved in a guild system; in that ancient form of association no single member is allowed to outperform any other member, is allowed to advertise or is allowed to introduce new technology or improvise without the advance consent of the guild. Violation of these precepts is severely sanctioned …
A movement as visibly destructive to individuality, family and community as government-system schooling has been might be expected to collapse … but this has not happened. … What is needed for several decades is the kind of wildly-swinging free market we had at the beginning of our national history.
The Public School Nightmare https://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/07/john-taylor-gatto/a-very-profitable-very-destructive-monopoly/
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This is a bit naive. If someone is standing in an alley between you and escape with a knife in their hand and an evil glint in the eye, are you seriously going to tell me that they do not present an apparent potential as an enemy? Would you tell me that you would disregard them as such and take no measure to handle the situation? If so, then I'd say you need to rethink a few things. Were someone doing that to me, they risk getting shot in short order, end of story. I have not the resources to risk the brands of potential destruction such people pose. If he is not a threat, onus rests with him not to appear as one.
Your normative ideal is commendable, and I share it with you completely. In the real world, things are a bit different. When I was majoring in physics, back in the stone age, we were instructed to make calculations disregarding effects of friction, wind resistance, and so forth. We were allowed the luxury and comfort of the ideal world such that calculating a firing solution for a hypothetical canon against a hypothetical target as a related-rates problem was comparatively very simple and easy. In the real world, ordnance engineers and soldiers must compensate for these externalities when placing bang precisely on target is the goal.
People claiming to want liberty sorely need to come to the real world, accept it as that which is, and proceed accordingly. All else equal, it is almost certain that nobody in these forums will live to see ideal freedom. That is not necessarily bad news, but it is a possibility that must be accepted if lesser goods are to be reasonably expected in time.
Lefties are eminently practical. Freedom lovers are not - they live in a fantasy world. Nothing wrong with ideals. I have mine, but I am learning to get real and accept that my autodiathist world will almost certainly not become real in the short remains of my lifetime. The best for which I can reasonably hope at this time is a change in the better direction. It is not even remotely possible to affect overnight changes at so fundamental a level as some people think they want. The average man cannot or will not absorb and adapt to it without violence and we all should know how well violent events tend to work out. History demonstrates this well.

Pretty much the point I've been making, apparently to no good effect.
If you want to let anyone in without question, then do it. But if and, more likely when, the shit hits the fan in the ways we've been seeing in Europe or worse, best hold your tongues because you'd been warned.
Nations have controlled their borders since ancient times. The need for such control is well modeled and understood. Ignore that need at your peril. Being a proper land, a proper people, internally to a so-called "nation" is not compromised just because those people do not treat outsiders of unknown character and intent differently from "their own". That is where one of the great fallacies of the unlimitedly open borders contingent lies.
I will repeat myself yet again: it is not the circumstance for which any freedom-loving individual wishes, but it is the dirty little necessity he recognizes as practically present in order to maintain the freedom he presumably enjoys. It is the generally shitty behavior of people that necessitates this in the face of that desire to remain as one is.
The open-borders contingent goes on and on about people's rights, yet ignores the rights of an indigenous people to be as they wish without external interferences beyond some threshold and nature. Their objection to a population reserving the right to determine who from the "outside" may enter the admittedly arbitrary borders of their lands is in principle no different from denying a man the right to deny entry of another onto his individually held property. That bright line in the sand that speaks to the borders of control over real property must be drawn somewhere, as a practical matter because that is how we have come to arrange the world. It may be a good way, or not - who can really say in any absolute manner? I've yet to turn my analytic eyes toward the issue.

Even Deep State Elements Admit
Intel chief: Federal debt poses 'dire threat' to national security
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned lawmakers Tuesday that failing to curb the national debt could jeopardize national security. ... the U.S. fiscal situation “is unsustainable ... and represents a dire threat to our economy and national security.” ... “I would urge all of us to recognize the need to address this challenge and take action as soon as possible before a fiscal crisis emerges that truly undermines our ability to ensure our national security,” ...
Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen in 2010 called the national debt “the most significant threat to our national security.” ...

Zilstra Resigns
Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra has announced his resignation, effective immediately. ... Since admitting he made the whole thing up ... he’s also set the stage for a vote of no confidence on Prime Minister Mark Rutte that could bring down his government. Rutte is defiant, however, insisting that while Zijlstra’s story might be made up ... it shouldn’t be that big of a deal ...

No s*&t Sherlock. Yes socialism tends to do that. And starving people with totalitarian blockades and sanctions tends to do that even faster.
Sanctions and blockades are as totalitarian communist measures as one can get - every individual and business must sacrifice for the "common good" of the uber government. Advocating totalitarian communism measures to oppose totalitarian communist measures? What is this nonsense in defense of totalitarian statist sanctions?
Do you think the North Koreans are any more grateful and wise because they are impoverished and starved by Washington's totalitarian economic sanctions as opposed to NK's totalitarian economics? Oh yes, we killed those people by our totalitarian communist economic measures. That's so much better than their totalitarian economics. This is pure statist lunacy. Don’t forget the purpose of the sanctions is to intentionally kill the North Korean populace through starvation and illness. As Jacob G. Hornberger explains, "The idea is that if enough of them are dying, either Kim Jong-un will abdicate in favor of a pro-U.S. dictator or ... a violent revolution and install a pro-U.S. dictator into power."
How about instead of embracing totalitarianism communist economics in the form of blockades and sanctions, actually combating socialism with the things that destroy it - free trade, communication, travel, dialogue.
Washington is not fighting totalitarianism with the sanctions. Washington is imposing economic totalitarianism. Washington is embracing totalitarianism as well as death, destruction, impoverishment, starvation and everything else that goes with it.
As already stated, Washington loves oppressive governments, so long as they are are obedient. It props them up, funds them, trains them, arms them. The sanctions embrace totalitarianism. The sanctions are totalitarian communist themselves. Washington does not give two cents worth of care for the people of North Korea. It has no problem instigating another mass genocide on the people of North Korea. It cares only about about bending another government to its will as an obedient vassal state.

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They closed the thread before I was able to respond to you, so I just wanted to say, I agree with all of your concerns about Rand Paul. I still think he's better than the other options, but he isn't my ideal. I'm most likely going to vote for him, but I don't blame people who won't. And if I was still going to live in NYS in 2016 (I'm moving to Virginia for college, which as we know is a swingy state) I would be less likely to vote for him. Even still, if the LP candidate is too good to pass up (Someone more like Harry Browne than Gary Johnson... the latter of which was more of a lesser of five evils) I would consider voting for them.